


Rattle Your Chains If You Love Being Free

by Catchclaw



Series: Mental Mimosa [259]
Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gladiators, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 10:25:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18519532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchclaw/pseuds/Catchclaw
Summary: His flesh was torn, ripped from his shoulder clear to the elbow. There was blood on hispteryges, too, a visceral, wine-soaked red. He wasn’t breathing.





	Rattle Your Chains If You Love Being Free

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Gladiator AU. Prompt from this [generator](http://colormayfade.tumblr.com/generator).

His flesh was torn, ripped from his shoulder clear to the elbow. There was blood on his _pteryges_ , too, a visceral, wine-soaked red. He wasn’t breathing.

Or so it seemed at first glance to Brucius as he studied the man whom the guards had left on his table: a dark-haired giant he’d never seen before, and who, even at the brink of death, was one of the most beautiful men he’d ever seen. The stranger’s features were delicate, as if set there carefully by a sculptor, and yet his body was broad, each curve of muscle perfectly outlined from his ankles to the barrel breadth of his chest. He was, Brucius thought, fingers at the edge of the man’s skin, the sort of creature that might have once weakened his defenses, one he might have paid good money for (despite his _amanuensis’s_ objections) and invited into his bed.

But that sort of choice belonged to a different life, a different man, didn't it? He could afford no such invitation now.

Brucius laid his palm on the man’s breastbone, searching for breath, and it was in that instant, when flesh pressed against flesh, that the gladiator’s eyes flew open and met his own with a gasp.

“The boy,” he managed, cracked glass over stone. “The boy. Where is he?”

“Where is who?”

“The boy, the _boy_!” The stranger started to struggle. “From the arena, the one who--”

Brucius pushed back, laid his body’s weight into the palm of his hand. “Be still. Be still!”

A bloody hand rose and clamped hard around his wrist even as the gladiator’s struggle faded. “Did he live?” the man rasped. “Have they brought him here? Where is he, where...?"

“You’re the only one they’ve brought me.”

The blue eyes beneath him filled and all at once, the fight left the man’s body. He sagged into the table. “Oh, gods,” he whispered. “Oh, gods, no. I thought…”

His fingers were grinding Brucius’ bones. He was bleeding all over the fucking table. He was, Brucius realized with a jolt, the first person to touch him in years. And he wept for the man--the boy--he had killed.

“You gave him an honorable death,” Brucius said, the platitude vinegar in his throat. “That is all a _servus_ can hope for, is it not? Finding death with the emperor himself in attendance?"

The gladiator’s eyes sharpened, a sword’s blade cutting through shadow. “If that is all the solace you can offer me, physician, then let me die.”

Brucius felt a flare of fury, a privilege--he forgot for a moment--that he could no longer afford. “I will not,” he spat. “Though so help me, I will call the guard back in and let them rip that arm from your shoulder. Treating the loss of a limb rather than trying to mend the mess that you’ve made of it would be a far simpler matter for me.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

He leaned down into the man’s face, that crushing grip on his wrist unrelenting. “If I say it, I mean it. Believe me, gladiator. I would.”

There was a heartbeat, two, when it felt as if the earth were pulled taught on a string, its spinning ceased, as if the sun in the sky itself ceased to burn, and all that was left, all that mattered, was the man beneath him, a man whose lovely flesh was hanging open from his shoulder and yet whose only thought was of a stranger who lay somewhere beneath the stadium being prepared for an unmarked _servus’s_ grave.

“Who are you?” Brucius said, his anger tempered now by wonder. “What kind of gladiator weeps for his opponent?”

The stranger laughed, a feeble, fading sound. “Kal.” His eyes tumbled closed; his fingers softened. “My name is Kal, physician. And I do not weep for those I have killed: I mourn.”

Only when he was certain the man had passed out did Brucius pry himself free, did he reach up and brush black curls from Kal’s forehead, curls damp with sweat and another’s blood. “Both of those are foolish,” he said softly, so the men outside his little room would not hear. “Do yourself a favor, gladiator, and spare some of that concern for yourself. You’ll need it. It will be a long time before you swing a sword again.”

But it was not, much to Brucius’ surprise, and it was therein that his vexation--his fascination--came to lie.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Hozier song, apparently? Pulled on a whim from this [generator](http://generatorland.com/usergenerator.aspx?id=22501) here.


End file.
